Third Wave

INTRODUCTION
In a time when terrorists play death-games with hostages,
as currencies careen amid rumors of a third World War, as
embassies flame and storm troopers lace up their boots in
many lands, we stare in horror at the headlines. The price of
goldfthat sensitive barometer of fear--breaks all records.
Banks tremble. Inflation rages out of control. And the gov-
crnments of the world are reduced to paralysis or imbecility.
Faced with all this, a massed chorus of Cassandras fills the
air with doom-song. The proverbial man in the street says
the world has "gone mad," while the expert points to all the
trends leading toward catastrophe.
This book offers a sharply different view.
It contends that the world has not swerved into lunacy, and
that, in fact, beneath the clatter and jangle of seemingly
senseless events there lies a startling and potentially hopeful
pattern. This book is about that pattern and that hope.
The Third Wave is for those who think the human story,
far from ending, has only just begun.
A powerful tide is surging across much of the world today,
creating a new, often bizarre, environment in which to work,
play, marry, raise children, or retire. In this bewildering con-
text, businessmen swim against highly erratic economic cur-
rents; politicians see their ratings bob wildly up and down;
universities, hospitals, and other institutions battle desperately
against inflation. Value systems splinter and crash, while the
lifeboats of family, church, and state, are hurled madly about.
Looking at these violent changes, we can regard them as